We have fermentations of Catawba and Concord going now. We’ll be adding the lag nutrients to keep the yeasts happy. We will also be bottling another batch of Red, White, & Blue® and getting yet another batch filtered after cold stabilization and ready for bottling next week. We are working on a new wine which we will call Iowa Sweet & Snazzy™. We will cold stabilize that wine this week.

We usually use Sabrevois to make a rosé, but this year, we’ve made it as a dry red wine and aged it in barrels that were used once to make a very high-end Cabernet Sauvignon. These barrels were made from oak grown in Missouri that has high amounts of whiskey lactones or flavors. It sounded like a good idea and this week we will taste this wine after about six months in the barrel. We have a batch of Marquette in the same kind of barrel and we will taste it, too. This is the fun part of wine making.